Chance me to Harvard REA + Ivys and MIT

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Demographics: Male, Indian, Midwest(low population state but I reside in its biggest city; still small city tho), Public School, and no significant hooks other than being from tiny state

Intended Major(s): Math and Chem, can I double major on application?

ACT/SAT/SAT II: 36 composite and superscore, 1560 SAT composite; should i just submit ACT? with that hurt me for east coast schools?

UW/W GPA and Rank: highschool has no rank, UW: 3.96, W: ~4.5

Coursework:

APHG: 5

AP Physics 1: 5

AP Physics 2: 5

AP Physics C mech(exam only): 5

AP Biology: 4

AP Chemistry(Exam only): 5

AP Spanish: 4

AP World history: 4

AP Calc BC(exam only): 5

AP statistics: 5

IB courses: math analysis HL, english HL, chem HL, psych sl, music sl, spanish sl

Awards:

1] United States National Chemistry Olympiad honors(top 1% or top 175/16000)

2] 1st individual in state wide math contest taken by ~1000 competitors

3] 2x AIME qualifier(top 5% on national math exam)

4] Drake physics prize 4th place(200 competitors from 4 different states; written physics exam)

5] National Merit Semi-finalist or I might write gold in national spanish exam level 4 idk yet

Extracurriculars:

1] paid research intern at local college where I did original research in math. Currently trying to publish paper, and if I do it would be first author. All work is alone and is only guided by professor, like it’s not the case where professor just tells me to do stuff. Does getting the publication change much?

2] Debate - Policy captain - teach novices and lower level varsity about policy and assist overall debate coach in meetings, state runner up individually, district champion, 2x NSDA national qualifier in 2 different debate events; helped judge middle school rounds

3] Orchestra/Violin

Orchestra - concertmaster at school, *** area youth orchestra, first violin section leader in school orchestra, part of private studio, played each year at christmas celebration as act on large performance by city’s actual symphony, all state orchestra first violinist senior year

4] Tennis

varsity 10th-12th grade, top 8 at state 12th grade, team captain 12th grade, volunteer teaching disabled kids tennis through city program

5]

Mu alpha theta math club - co-president, help train team at weekly meetings for math competitions, my team of 3 placed first in the state competition

6]

Took college class at local university about algebraic number theory and received over a 100%

7]

spanish honors society director of education - we help teach elementary schoolers spanish each week and set up day of the dead celebrations and assist in reading spanish books at the local library, got gold on national spanish exam

8]

Chemistry club - president and spent several hours training the students for the USNCO and state chem contest

9] science bowl - president, team captain of my team, state semifinalists, I run all training practices at school and did summer practices

Essays: assume relatively strong, I’m most likely going to write about my passion for problem solving and hopefully relate it to something not so academic or I might do something about reading idk

LORs:

English Teacher: 6/10, He likes me and thinks I’m capable, but he also gives LORs to many people in my grade, but we have many personal experiences so I think that the LOR will probably be pretty decent

Chem teacher: 10/10 I’m probably the best student he’s ever had and he knows it. we work together in several clubs as well

Colleges:

REA: Harvard

RD: UPenn(sibling legacy), rest of ivys, MIT, Caltech, UC berkeley, UCLA, Rice, Stanford, UMich, WashU, my state school(for safety and I don’t want to name)

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Your chances at these reach schools are the same as everyone else who applies. You have very nice application credentials but so do the vast majority of students applying to these schools. So…apply and see. Just keep in mind that all have acceptance rates that are very low. You have as good a chance as anyone else to be accepted or not.

I would strongly suggest adding a second sure thing school because it’s nice to have a choice if it comes to that.

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Every student does not have the same odds of acceptance to highly rejective schools. I think your chances are better than many applicants and you should have at least a couple of acceptances to schools on your list. Try to improve your essay topic (boring) and consider a different LOR writer for the predicted weaker one. Good luck!

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Your application looks like it could be really compelling given that your perfect/near-perfect scores are backed up by strong competition and other EC results.

Applying as a double major will depend on the school. Some schools admit by college, some by major, some will allow multiple majors…it’s going to depend and require research on your part to see which major(s) will be the best route at each college.

Do you have an option for a LOR other than your English teacher? Having a stem and non-stem LOR is usually recommended for highly selective colleges, so your approach makes sense, but is there a different teacher (foreign language? social studies?) that could write a stronger compelling LOR?

As you know, the competition is fierce and results are getting less predictable at these top schools so I won’t venture a guess or make specific predictions, but you seem to have the foundation to be a really strong candidate.

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Are you submitting a music supplement with video/recording, music resume and LOR related to music, if the school accepts one? You don’t have to major in music or even plan to do extracurricular music on campus. for the supplement to be useful

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Yes, I agree with @itsgettingreal21 about your essay topic. AOs want to understand you as a person. They can tell from your ECs that you enjoy problem solving. Tell them something that they don’t know, something that will let them imagine how you would fit into the campus community, etc.

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Make sure you give the English teacher a resume or highlight sheet. If only a 6, find another teacher.

Since your less populated in state - honors I assume college is your safety, you have a great list !!

Why all ivies ? They are different. How bout other top LACs top or 2nd level fallback such as WFU or CWRU etc.

Congrats on what you’ve done and what you’ll do.

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it’s not really all ivy’s, I just didn’t want to type out the entire list. more or less, i care about my chances more than the actual college for this post. I will not be applying to all ivys - Harvard, Yale, UPenn and possibly Columbia are the ones I care about.

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What is your annual budget for college costs? Have you asked your parents?

I ask, because you have some CA public universities on your list. They give no need based aid to OOS students and very little merit aid. At UCLA and CAL expect to be full pay every year at about $65,000 a year. Is that affordable for your family?

It looks like you want to be in a major metro urban area, not in a small town for college. The SLACs suggested upstream are largely located in smaller towns. But unless you have visited and hate this sort of place, perhaps consider them.

There are many many urban colleges where you would get accepted, and some with auto merit aid. Are you interested in hearing about any of these options?

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yes; price is not an issue for my parents regarding the costs

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You appear to be a top candidate! Congratulations on a great resume. A few more questions to fill in the gaps:
What is your estimated rank? 3.96 unweighted can be near the very top or out of the top 10%, depending on the HS. You need to find out, as colleges typically can get a general sense from the school profile, which often lists a gpa breakdown, or from their familiarity with your school and typical top gpas.
How many students does your school send to ivy- or similar level colleges each year?
For the APs you self-studied, are they offered at your school? Did you take all of these in 9&10th grade, or do you somehow have 11th grade scores already?

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My school doesn’t do rank. I would estimate top 10(people not percent) if not top overall.

My school is small and we typically send maybe 2-7 people to ivy league(2 in 2022 but a little higher in past years; harvard is weirdly high).

The APs I self studied are offered at my school with exception of ap physics C. I took IB program, which is why chem and BC I self-studied. I estimated the scores of the ones for junior year, but for the one’s I put 4’s on, I am underestimating and am quite sure of the rest.

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As others have said you are a very strong applicant and are competitive at any university. Unfortunately so are the large majority of applicants to top schools. The Ivy League schools, Stanford, and other schools on your list give some spots to legacies, URMs, and athletes (the Ivy League is of course an athletic league in addition to being a collection of old and very good universities) which of course takes away some slots and being Asian will not help you.

Harvard and MIT and probably some others on your list do not admit by major, Your intention to dual major will not impact your chances. MIT for example uses your intended major to help assign freshman year advisors to incoming students.

1560 is a very good SAT score, even for top schools. I would submit both your ACT and your SAT.

Your paid internship sounds good to me (I was a math major, and am a bit jealous).

I would make sure that you have a safety or two that you are happy with. I think that you might also want to think about which schools you feel are the best fit and prioritize making sure that you are happy with your application to those schools.

Are you in a WUE state? If so then if money matters at all you might want to consider whether there are any other WUE schools that are worth your applying to (in addition to your in-state public university).

Your accomplishments to this point are impressive, and I expect that you will do well wherever you end up.

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I am a little confused on why you didn’t just take the AP courses at your school, for BC and Chem. If you are indeed in the top 10 kids and 2-7 go to ivies and the like, and the rest of the top 10 kids took the most difficult APs at the school, it could make it more challenging for you to stand out.
For the AP scores, please don’t put in scores that you do not have yet, just put pending. Otherwise it is quite misleading for folks to read your post and assess your chances.

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He answered the question; he’s doing the IB Diploma Programme.

Of course, that does beg the question of why he did AP exams for IB subjects taken at HL.

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IP classes are as respected by AOs as AP classes and he is doing IB. Maybe he was hoping for college placement with his AP scores.

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Yes , of course, I realize I am not too clear on how the IB diploma works. I think my confusion came from the lack of knowledge plus there are two different public schools here that have both AP and IB: at one, the harder road is the IB program and most of the top school and state flagship admissions skew toward that group. In the other school, it is the opposite: the IB classes are not as hard as the corresponding APs, kids will avoid the hard APs to have the easier As , and it seems to affect them in admissions. So I think kids who post chance-me threads really need to understand their course choices could be a factor, based on what is offered and what is taken by top kids at their HS.

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I think you will get in to at least one of your ‘reach’ schools.

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Despite your stats, I think your chances at Harvard SCEA are unpredictable. You are much better off applying ED to Penn, especially since you have sibling legacy. In the RD round your legacy benefit will not help.

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Will not help as much. But it’s moot in this case as sibling legacy is not a thing at Penn.

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